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So, I’ve decided that it’s fall already. Despite the fact that if I put on a sweater right now I’d probably get heat stroke. But it hits ninety degrees here in January, so whatever. I just cannot stop using fall colors on my nails. This is another look I put together with some of the polishes from the new OPI, Essie, & China Glaze fall collections. I’m not sure how I feel about the metallic polishes together. They actually look really similar in indirect lighting because the pink one is actually a pink/bronze duochrome. So I feel like I liked these better in real life. But the cat nail is amazeballs, right? It was inspired by (who else?) Mr. Candiipants.

I started with a base of China Glaze Change Your Altitude. The cats were painted with China Glaze Cabin Fever and Essie In the Lobby, which were also used in the plaid. I also used Essie Leggy Legend and China Glaze Free Bear Hugs to add a bit more dimension to the plaid nails.

This isn’t my favorite plaid, but I love the cat polka dots. I also can’t get enough of this color palette. Can you tell?

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Did I mention I love fall? I am so ready for colder weather, especially after the hundred degree weekend we just had. I know it’s still technically summer, but I think I’m done with summer nails already. I’ve been craving dark, edgy colors and graphic patterns. These nails were the result of me trying to do a summery pattern – gingham – but gravitating towards darker colors. I am obsessed with this!

I actually used one polish from each of the Essie, OPI, and China Glaze Fall collections. I honestly can’t get enough of them right now! I used OPI Be There in a Prosecco as a base. Then I painted on the pattern with Essie In the Lobby and darkened the line intersections with China Glaze Free Bear Hugs. I topped it with OPI Matte Topcoat just for fun. I haven’t done matte nails in a while.

I’ve been practicing doing nail art with my non-dominant hand (I still suck at it), but these are making me want to get good so I can do this nail art on both hands and wear it forever. I love these nails so much!

I hope you like these as much as I do. Because chances are, you’re going to see them again. I’m already thinking of ways to combine these with other nail art. Maybe a subtle floral pattern on a few accent nails?

Fall is my favorite season for nail polish. I usually end up buying most, if not all, of the OPI, Essie, and China Glaze collections every year. It doesn’t matter how many oxblood nail polishes I own, I always need more. This year, I ended up really loving almost all of the polishes from the fall collections, so I thought I’d share my must-haves from each one. Just look how pretty!

OPI Venice Collection

I’ll be honest, the majority of this collection doesn’t scream fall to me (about half of it is pastel), but I still really like them! But there are some amazing fall colors and I absolutely love that they threw in what I consider “staple” colors.

First off is my absolute favorite – It’s a Piazza Cake. This pumpkin orange is classic OPI; it reminds me a lot of polishes like OPI Ginger Bells. I am a sucker for shades like this!

There are two reds in this collection, one is a classic red creme and the other, Gimme a Lido Kiss is a gorgeous sparkly metallic red. This one is more holiday to me, but it’s still gorgeous. I feel like I have a lot of polishes similar to Gimme a Lido Kiss, but it still feels a bit unique.

I believe twelve of the fifteen shades in this collection will become core polishes, but the other three are limited edition colors. Of those three, I love St. Mark’s the Spot, which is an amazing metallic blue. I can’t get enough of colors like this!

Then we have the three “staple” colors. These are the kind of colors I use all the time in my nail art and often get backups of. I Cannoli Wear OPI is a very pale gray. I thought it might be a dupe for My Boyfriend Scales Walls, but it’s a teensy bit more yellow-toned. Be There in a Prosecco is almost a dupe for another favorite of mine, My Vampire is Buff – it’s a teeny tiny bit pinker. Finally, Tiramisu for Two is a muted pinky nude, very similar to My First Knockwurst. I think these types of colors are great in anyone’s collection! They make brilliant bases for almost any nail art, and they all have great formulas.

China Glaze The Great Outdoors Collection

I think this collection is overall, really pretty! There is definitely something for everyone, including a really awesome chartreuse color, which I used as the background for this nail art.

My hands-down favorite of this collection is Take a Hike. It’s a dusty green one-coater that reminds me of past favorites like Essie School of Hard Rocks and Vested Interest but a bit darker. Love, love, love this color!

There are three duochromes in this collection, and while I like them all, I think Cabin Fever is the most unique. It’s a warm bronze with a very strong pink flash. (P.S. If you’re considering Gone Glamping, it’s similar to but not another Chanel Peridot dupe – it’s actually more of a champagne gold, which I prefer. Just FYI.)

And last but not least is Sleeping Under the Stars. This one immediately reminded me of a fall version of Fancy Pants from the China Glaze Avant Garden Collection (spring 2013). It’s a dark purple-toned navy with a warm pink shimmer. I think it’s a really unique take on dark fall nails and I will probably be wearing this a lot.

Essie Leggy Legend Collection

This collection is a collaboration with Rebecca Minkoff and was inspired by rock royalty. I definitely get that vibe from these colors. They’re classy and a little bit edgy. Most of them are not terribly unique, but I think they’re all really pretty.

My first favorite is Leggy Legend itself. It’s a warm metallic bronze color that just screams fall. I don’t normally wear metallic colors, but I am obsessed with bronze nails for fall. And this might be my new favorite bronze. It’s edgy without being dark.

And finally, I’ve been really loving Bell-Bottom Blues. It is a dark teal with a strong bright teal shimmer. It kind of reminds me of Essie Dive Bar (which I’ve loved for years), but the shimmer is a bit coarser and more blue. I love this kind of color for fall because it looks dark and vampy (but still interesting) and then the light hits it and you get all sorts of shimmer.

And that’s it! Hope you enjoyed this post – it was a bit different from what I usually do. Let me know if you like this kind of post, and maybe I will do more favorites or general collection reviews. I tend not to do swatches anymore, just because you can find tons of them on the internet – but if you want to see comparisons or a certain color, please let me know! I am planning on using most of these polishes in nail art over the next few months, so keep an eye out for that.

What are your fall favorites this year?

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Fall is my favorite nail polish season. I just love the colors every single year. Recently, I picked up some all of China Glaze’s The Great Outdoors collection. Obviously, I had to try them immediately, and came up with this look inspired by a pattern I saw somewhere online and now can’t find. My original idea was to do arrows, but I think these look more like pine trees (which is pretty fitting for a collection called The Great Outdoors).

I started with a base of S’More Fun, which is this really cool chartreuse color. It’s the most summery polish in the collection, and one of my favorite colors. I have a lot of colors like this, but I think this one might be my new favorite – it looks pretty good on my skin tone. The “trees” are painted with Take a Hike, which is a gorgeous, dusty pine green. It reminds me of a less-blue version of something like Essie School of Hard Rocks. I love wearing greens like this!

So far, I am loving this collection! There are some lovely cremes, a few duochromes, a glitter, and a couple of lovely shimmer polishes. I also love that this year, the OPI, Essie, and China Glaze fall collections are totally different (I feel a bit better about buying all of them). My OPIs are still in the mail, but I don’t see any dupes at all, which is awesome! I am really excited about these colors, which means you’ll probably be seeing them a lot. I really love these even though they turned out completely different than I’d imagined. Let me know in the comments which fall polishes you’d like to see next!

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I have never used water decals before, but I’ve been really wanting to try some because they look really cool! When Born Pretty Store offered to send me some products for review, I immediately went to check out their enormous water decal selection. These caught my eye, and I ended up really loving them!

For these nails, I started off with a base of China Glaze Light as Air. Then I created a very subtle watercolor/tie-dye (which sadly didn’t show up that well on camera) using Color Club Holy Chic!, Feathered Hair Out to There, and Meet Me at the Rink. After that, I applied the water decals and added some topcoat.

Honestly, one of the reasons I hadn’t tried water decals is because I thought they’d be messy and thick and just not worth the effort. These totally proved me wrong! They were much easier to apply than full nail decals or polish strips. They look similar to stamping, but they took me less time and there was almost no clean-up involved. I’d definitely use these again!

You can check out these dandelion water decals at Born Pretty Store here. The only thing I didn’t really like was that the full nail designs included in this set were very long and narrow, which didn’t work well for my short, wide nails. I ended up trimming the design I used on my thumb so the edges weren’t obvious. Next time, I think I’ll go for one of their continuous designs and cut it to fit my nails, like this zodiac water decal set – I think it looks really cool! I am officially a fan of water decals!

Don’t forget to use code PSQW10 to get 10% off your order at Born Pretty Store!

Disclaimer: The products in this post were sent to me for review and my honest opinion.

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I really wanted to use this beautiful blue polish from the China Glaze spring collection, but I had absolutely no idea what to do on it. I briefly considered some Cinderella nail art, but I was feeling kind of lazy, so I ended up with this. I was inspired by some folk art floral prints. Not my favorite, but I don’t hate it. I do love the colors together, though!

The base is China Glaze Dashboard Dreamer, which is a gorgeous pale blue with peachy pink shimmer. You can just barely see the shimmer, and I love the slight glow it gives with the matte topcoat. The flowers were painted with Essie A-List and OPI Aloha from OPI. I’m trying to use my untried polishes for nail art because I feel like I’ve been using the same bunch of colors a lot. This was my first time wearing both Dashboard Dreamer and Aloha from OPI. Dashboard Dreamer is a favorite for me (despite the fact it needs three coats), but Aloha from OPI is a bit unoriginal. In fact, China Glaze came out with an almost-dupe in the same collection as Dashboard Dreamer – I Brake for Color.

This is for sure a color combo I’ll be keeping in mind from now on! I really love how they look together. The nail art is definitely not my best work (can you tell it was one in the morning?), but it didn’t turn out all that bad. Let me know what you think!

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As you’ve probably guessed if you’ve been following this blog, I have a lot of nail polish. It’s gotten to the point where I can’t remember which ones I have (I used to know my stash really well). So I’ve decided to start doing some nail art with my untried polishes. They need some love, too!

Herringbone is one of my favorite patterns, so I decided to do some new herringbone nails (I’ve been experimenting with this pattern on false nail sets, too). The base is China Glaze At Vase Value, which I actually just bought, and the design is Revlon Holographic Pearls. It’s a super-dense holographic topcoat, actually very similar to Cult Nails Coachella. Both of these polishes are new to me, and I really like them both. I can’t believe I went so long without picking up At Vase Value!

I kind of wish I’d put a solid color underneath Holographic Pearls (maybe a gray?), but I like how these turned out anyway. This pattern is so quick and easy and I love the way it looks! I just finished a false nail set for my Etsy shop with this pattern in gray and lime.